HES Board Meeting - Sept 21st, 2020

001on the left and it will pop on there we go we are now recording and you can now call the order and did we decide is somebody going to scratch notes or uh no we didn't decide let's call the meeting to order and we'll decide okay so i'm going to call this meeting of the heartland uh school board um at together at night at 609 um p.m on august 20th um so we need to decide who's taking notes um i'm the secretary you are okay yeah regretfully so um are you i don't think it has to be fancy either just as as long as you capture the major items and yeah um if i don't i don't have time in my my schedule to be able to actually like like listen to the recording or

002try to like get any clarifications so if i can just send them to you david and if there's somebody in your office that can maybe glance over some of the recording or make sure it seems a million you know that's coherent then i'm happy to do that off of you by law we're only required to record motions and really much the the gist of the conversation and so that's exactly right yeah like literally just took our six bullets that we have for the meeting tonight um and then if we make any motions just record those motions um and if there's a huge discussion that's a little bit different just know what that discussion was about um but it's all gonna be posted so anyone who wants to to find out exactly what happened can just

003watch the video and go to the recording absolutely you get that posted usually by the next day but yeah i would say just motions and and no action taken after discussion on blah blah blah and then then you're done you know i mean i i i think diane did her sometimes she did herself in by get by providing too much detail just keep it simple okay um so beth is gonna take notes and they're going to be simple and if people want the full picture they can watch the meeting um okay so we have to approve the minutes of august 20th uh did everybody get a chance to read them yes who took these meetings was that you angie it might have was it you angie it might have been diane that i am these

004were good i don't remember i took i remember taking them at your retreat but i don't remember if i took them then so is it at the bottom sometimes at the bottom i will say it might have been me oh yeah that was you okay how are you asking for christine's note or for christine's presentation um okay so a bad president angie those are really thorough yeah i realized that when you were talking about i'm like well well though that was i wish you told me that yeah but notice i didn't volunteer tonight but no that's smart i i i hear you and the other thing i can do too like you said beth is i can have lori you know just watch the tape if she has to and you know well but i

005mean you know as long as you get the basics down that's the key so do either if you want to make a motion i would move that we approve the minutes from our retreat was that our that wasn't our retreat oh that wasn't the retreat approved the minutes from the august meeting of the heartland school board beth you want a second okay should be better um and sarah while beth is typing do you have uh any comments on the meeting minutes i only that they were excellent minutes that's the only comment i have and you want a part-time job beth do you want to comment on the minutes okay so um i'll move to uh vote so all those in favor of approving the minutes of august 20th 2020 please say aye aye okay so

006the minutes were approved who is that that might be uh is that one of our board members who just came on with the phone maybe we don't know okay um so we are what yeah we are at the public participation uh portion of the meeting um is the person that's on the phone a member of the public and wants to make a comment scott has arrived is he scott can you hear me now we can yep yes okay this is just honestly i tried joining through the google me video and it wouldn't work so i did it via phone oh well that's too bad yeah because i i didn't how'd you find the phone number that's great it was it was right below below it on on the same link information and i'm just gonna

007double check the agenda oh wait then yeah we should make sure nobody's waiting to get in in the waiting room yeah but david david would be getting those requests and i don't think he's gotten any no they would they would come to me and and i sent donald the link that um is on our agenda it ends in zja yeah you i can try you sent that to my email yeah i sent that to your email oh yeah after we started okay so that may be pressure um you could try it again just call back in yeah okay um she'll she'll get back to us yeah um i don't so i do have one other thing um for public participation um there were two parents that uh wanted to come to the meeting and then

008kind of threw up their arms and so i'm going to put this in the public participation section because i was asked to share the following with the hes board so i am going to read this to you um and there's donna hey donna sorry i'm gonna read this um to you and then um we can have a short discussion um but the parents decided not to join us because they were frustrated with my response which i will tell you about in a minute um it was made clear to me in the in the private uh okay please share with the has board so um this is a parent whose uh child is in the remote program and in particular um their their remote classroom teacher has 37 kids in the classroom and so um it's

009been challenging for their family and so i'll share it now that i've put a little context in um it was made clear to me in a private meeting last thursday that parents are expected to be teachers for distance learners and that teachers are just the facilitators slash coaches this is the specific language that was used i don't think that was ever communicated to parents most of whom are balancing jobs child care of younger children and or other learners among other responsibilities i doubt if the 37 kids and parents in the third fourth distance classroom are aware of this expectation the district seems to be assuming that everything is fine because they haven't gotten a lot of parent feedback yet but it is my strong opinion that the expectation that students can use the vtvlc learning

010interface with only five 20-minute mini lessons per week across four subjects and multiple topics each core subject is untenable my fourth grader is a self-motivated and independent learner and in third grade she was in advanced reading and math groups but she could not understand the vtvlc lessons without one-on-one support and we struggled to complete the worksheets without any feedback about what was expected from the teacher aka coach i am not a trained teacher and teaching common core content in a developed mentally and engaging way just feels beyond what parents are equipped to do i believe at the moment most students are going through the interface and completing lessons without learning the material and in a few weeks or maybe a month there will be a huge blowback as well as issues with students who have

011not been doing work because the whole platform does not allow students to work independent including finding and printing worksheets and then taking photographs of work emailing to the teacher outside of the portal fact is the plat this platform and the support being offered by the district teacher does not allow students to complete the learning independently in the 3-4 classroom furthermore it is shocking to me that parents are expected to teach their own children while enrolled in the district i think parents signed up for distance learning because they thought their children would be educated by a teacher with the support of an online curriculum and parents were willing to help get kids started and help if their kids had specific questions to reiterate parents are not trained teachers and cannot pull dynamic learning lessons out of

012their pocket to make text heavy content on the interface take on meaning and the weekly schedule does not have enough time to teach content the expectation that students can learn on this interface independently does not correspond with the capability of the interface it is reasonable to think parents can help students get started or ask a few questions but it feels like but it feels like too heavy and unreasonable burden to expect them to be teachers finally i was told by david and angie that splitting three the third and fourth grades which would mean a teacher that would be able to spend twice as much time providing teaching and direct student support and align the classes with the mandated district limits and cap set by vtblc would require a budget change and i assume the hes

013board would be part of that decision i am very concerned that many students will languish in this system because there is a critical disconnect between the tool aka vtvlc interface and the approach this district is taking limiting and offering limited teacher support and i hope you can do what you can within your power to fix the situation i also feel that there are legal questions around the class size exceeding district limits so um the so i invited the parents to come there are two parents um that were involved with this but it's i've only been communicating with one of them the challenge here is that heartland has um bind on to the su program of providing remote learning and so heartland um by ourselves we can't really do anything um to change this um i

014told the parent that it would have to go up to the su level um and she um i was just feeling too overwhelmed and didn't feel like dealing with that um so that's where we are um and so i think that it's worth a discussion um but i don't know a discussion at the heartland level because we can't do anything about it um but i do want board members to be aware that there's at least two parents that are frustrated with the remote curriculum um and that's where we are good just for a little a little context um to nikki's discussion um i um i was approached by and i heard from from this family but i was also approached by another family who were raving about the remote learning program um they said that

015they're in a different grade level and it sounds like it's a smaller class but they were just raving about it and saying that the teacher was fantastic and um they are having a great experience and couldn't be happier um so just for a little a little balance there um welcome to our world sarah right so i you know i don't know if it's a question of t of the specific teacher or if this class size is a real issue or what it is but um just wanted to pass that on i guess if can you hear me sarah yeah okay also on a parent point of view is one reason why i opted out of the online option was because i felt it was set forth very clearly that the expectation was that um it

016would be parent and child and very little to do with the teacher who was and i even remember david reaching out to you and maybe even miss born a little bit to make sure that i completely grasp that concept before making the decision and nate and i just felt that that was something we weren't going to be able to be here for the full day to support and knowing my own children i felt they would not be able to have jumped into this on their own without us being here so we knew the remote option would mean one of us would have to get done work and be here um so i feel from a parent point of view it was very clear that it was going to be one teacher to a large group

017and very little communication between the teacher and child or the teacher and parent so that that's just another another thought that i i had a totally different view than what that letter just portrayed you know that yeah and i i certainly appreciate that donna because i know that on angie's behalf because angie's coordinating this but she spent hours and hours communicating with all of these parents either either in the decision phase or just just as they were signing on and you know making it really clear so i i think and again i mean i'm not saying i mean it everybody's life circumstances are different right and and the problem we've got now is that whether you want to go from 100 remote back to the classroom or the other way around it now depends on

018capacity so for example i think that's that's what that's what the su board will have to address i mean i'm sure we can certainly put it on the agenda angie can speak to what's going on right now uh and uh you know maybe we could even have one or two of the one the remote teachers come on and talk about how it's how it's going but um i really think in the end if if we were gonna because that that particular grade level that you're talking about nikki is not the only one that's a little larger i mean seven eight is a little larger and is large but i mean they're they're working it out and they're setting up those groups but it is as donna said it's pretty it's pretty independent and that's why

019we chose the vtvlc platform because the lessons are embedded in the in the actual uh software so you know you can click on that lesson and and i'm not saying that's ideal for for some parents it seems like set like sarah said it's working but for others you know it it may not but we're only in week two and i think we've got to give it a little bit of time here because the instructors were all brand new with vtvlc they've worked their tails off under angie's leadership and quite frankly the the the 2-3 teacher that is referenced in that letter is one of our best su teachers the remote angie got some of the best you know su teachers we've got across the streets and it's a dynamic team so i just think you

020know it's a little bit of patience and a little bit of understanding but i i don't you know i mean you know you could certainly cut the class sizes in half but it would mean hiring another one two three teachers and i think that would have to be an su decision um and i'm not sure it would necessarily improve things that much but angie i don't know if you wanted to speak to it or not but um what i do want to say is um that the we have 13 third graders and we have 21 4th graders so the number is actually 34 and one of those fourth graders is returning one or two of those fourth graders will be returning to in person this week we've had some requests from families right away that

021realized it was more than they had the capacity to manage and they've requested to go back in person um and we've done our best to accommodate that um when we made the the remote only option we didn't screen people we allowed any parent that felt that it was the best thing for their family to choose that option and as i think as clear as we have tried to be with what it would be requiring of parents and children it has been far more challenging than we anticipated i do think it's only getting better all the time um each week um the um well this is the beginning of our third week right and that meeting that teacher that the third 3-4 teacher feels like actually this week she might actually do a little bit more

022than routines and um developing community much like what you do in person you're you go slow so that you can go fast you develop your routines your structures and you figure out how to make it work for everyone um and so i think you also have to learn your group and and learn what their needs are so that's what our our teachers all our teachers are doing right now remote and in person um so i do think that for some families it just was has been much more of a learning a steeper learning curve than they than they thought and i i regret that but i we didn't i think it's the best thing that we could have offered right now and i'll stand by that decision because i really think it was the best

023thing that we could have put together and it's not perfect and we're all learning together so yeah and remember this too that the agency of education and the governor's office much to our chagrin didn't make a decision on having to offer 100 until pretty i think we were like three or f four maybe five weeks out um when we when we got that news so we didn't have a lot of time we just thought as the governor said back in whenever he made the first announcement we thought we were just all going back right and we had we were working on this plan and then all of a sudden we we heard that we should accommodate any parent who wants to have their children at home 100 of the time and that was a pretty

024that was a heavy lift and and and i again i don't want to embarrass her but i think angie did a and the administrative team in general did an incredible job several of our principals had to give up their best teeth some of their best or better teachers to make this work and and uh you know i i think it's i think it's just a little early uh to uh you know to be you know overly critical but i think we'll i i think we can address it at the su level have this conversation i think the thing with those parents nikki emailed me i just said wrong wrong board it's not the right board to make this to have this con we can have the conversation but really it's the su board because you're

025sharing that expense across the su and we just have and a matter of fact we've put we've charged a lot of it to the coveted line but as ed will tell you heads on the line we're not sure you know how those coveted monies are going to get expended but it's an s u decision not a local decision so i think nikki answered that parent you know correctly one thing i i didn't mention is that um our class our biggest class size when i was just looking at the numbers is um 36 i think david i had told you that our 7 8 was up over 40 at one point they were so um 36 is our largest class size um that's our seven eight and then our smallest class size is our k1 um

026and that makes sense with our no it does a little list no i agree so if anybody else has any questions that's fine but i think we just saved this for the su meeting yeah um thank you all um so uh donna and we have another person on the line um we're still in the public uh participation portion of the meeting um is there anything else that uh you all would like to add to this part of the meeting yeah i was going to say donna is such a regular here that she was actually when when i was emailed the agenda and nikki was to look it over i think donna actually got a copy of the agenda then so she could have some input into that agenda she doesn't realize i said she's sort

027of like an ex-official board member right now okay i'm on board donna did you have anything else that you wanted to add in the public participation portion no i'm all set thanks okay um okay so we're gonna move on to the regular agenda items um we have uh the first agenda item up is um covent update and status of schools um david i assume you're doing that and then we'll roll that right into the budget discussion yeah i know that's fine and then yeah because i know i think ed is also here by phone if not by video so actually before we get there i forgot to ask if there are any changes or additions to the agenda um kind of covers everything already i think we're good yeah it's a pretty healthy pretty good

028agenda sorry nikki i noticed that there was a portrait of a graduate update and we don't have anything no no we don't oh okay okay yeah i mean yeah so we may not need to do that other than we do have to i think we still need to pull that chair meeting together because we were going to do that before we talked about the portrait also at the end i think we were waiting until october until things settled hopefully okay so we'll call that an update so um i lost you beth where did you go oh there you are um so we'll just call that the update for portrait of the graduate we're waiting for um october to review the strategic plan with the board chairs yeah and and its plan is certainly well written

029but in terms of the covert update and feel free christina and angie to uh uh to uh jump in um but you know we're now as angie said two plus weeks into into both the 100 remote and the in-person instruction and i think in terms of just the general efficiency and effectiveness of operation i think the plans all that planning this summer you know really paid off and i think the cooperation from staff and the cooperation from parents because parents have been very diligent about drop off times and pick up times and uh and adjusting to some of the new curriculum uh i think it's really helped uh to help you know to have this to have this uh work well um i do think that the um we've had the tweak we've had to

030tweak a few things uh we had a couple of transportation issues at the beginning i think those are are are getting uh resolved now um we um and we you know we those were more related to the amount of scotty school district but across the board they there were a few little a few little glitches here and there the other thing that we're having to really wrestle with and get better at but i think we i think we're getting there we had a meeting on friday with all of the school nurses because there there's really that out the outstanding question about you know what is the threshold of tolerance around symptoms you know what symptoms are going to trip a switch they've got an algorithm for students the problem is they uh the the the

031vermont department of health and the aoe never published an algorithm for adults so uh so so what the what the nurses have been doing essentially is trying to transpose that algorithm for the students to the adults which means that if there's a symptom you know that could be covert related that that is a that is beyond the threshold of normal for you some people you know get headaches some people have allergies some people have you know other health issues so uh when you fill out that morning health check the nurse you know and you check off one of those symptoms the nurse is going to have a conversation with you and we just wanted to make sure that that conversation was uh consistent across the su and that we were all on the same page

032in terms of making sure that that symptom wasn't related to something that was you know something you would you experience anyway like a migraine headache or a sniffly nose or an earache or you know some people are prone to those things um as we go forward and i i much to our pleasure the nurses all you know they all had the same approach to this which was great and and and i think they're doing a great job really trying to uh contain this and uh and and be consistent with it and they take their job very seriously and they're making this series of phone calls in the morning both to students and and and and staff who are who are contemplating whether they should come in or not and i think they i think they're

033doing a great job uh with that and uh and so we don't know whether an algorithm will ever get posted but it it felt good to hear that there was a similar situation now by the way you know uh both with students and with staff and i'm sure that you know we won't get into any specific stories but there can be some frustration levels because if in fact you've identified a symptom and you feel you're okay to come in whether it's a parent with a student or whether it's a staff member you know and that nurse says no you can't come in you need to stay home or more importantly sometimes the nurse has to say look you've been with that symptom now for two or three days you need to call your pcp and

034unless you unless you get tested we're not going to let you come back in and you can imagine first of all that puts a burden on the buildings because they have to find and adjust staffing patterns so that they can handle those kids but also uh on the part mostly of parents there's a frustration level that you know or a resistance maybe to testing or i i want to give it a couple more days but i think the nurses are trying to be compassionate and gentle as they as they go about it but it's very critical and i'll tell you a little anecdote uh that we just found out uh today where this where this worked we had a new uh a new support staff member that was starting in rsu i won't mention the

035building but the s but that person arrived arrived on the first day of school and was experiencing a headache and the nurse said well do you get migraines do you no but i you know i just i woke up this morning my headache was pretty serious and blah blah blah the nurse sent them right home and said no you got to go home and and and then the headache turned into a fever the next day and turned into uh a little bit more of a of a of a of um a congestive kind of feeling and that went on for three or four days and and uh and then the you know the nurse said because they kept in constant contact with the person in terms of allowing them to come back in and said

036you better call your pcp took this person a while to get to their pcp but the nurse was insistent they weren't coming back to school until they had this checked out because the the symptoms hadn't hadn't haven't requested yet so to make a long story short the person just got tested late last week and lo and behold over the weekend found out they kept it positive for covert but we're not gonna i mean i mean i may put out a little something to folks letting them letting them know but i i really think nobody will you know nobody came in contact with this person because of the because of the vigilance of that nurse and uh and uh so i i felt like we're doing we're doing it right uh and i don't think we

037are gonna have to worry or adjust much i think it is the way to go the last thing i'll say and then if anybody wants to add feel free there are some things we're learning about um about uh teaching and learning in this covet environment uh and and ways in which we're scheduling and wrapping around kids and doing some stuff remotely and some stuff in person i hope we have a chance as an su and individual districts to analyze this because i think some of this is stuff that we we some of it we may want to hold on to because i think it's been i think it's been a very powerful experience for you know i've even noticed in the buildings and brittany and christine may negate this because i i wasn't there today

038but i mean i just find a real calm and tranquil uh peacefulness in the building because kids are in pods they're surrounded by adults they're not doing a lot of transitioning which is when quite frankly kids can get can get a little wound up and uh and uh and again i'm not saying that you know that's how we want to live forever but maybe a part of that or a portion of that is something we want to look at because i think that you build that sense of family within that pod and everybody gets sort of respectful and and again you're not constantly banging lockers shut and running into each other in the corridor and that sort of stuff i think that uh that's that's really that's really been good stuff and i i see

039britney's hand up so i don't know if you wanted to say something about it just gonna say something real quickly because um you know i've heard a couple of different teachers just saying how positive the there's been a lot more co-teaching going on and you know because there's more adults in the room and they're all working together on this and that's been a big positive so hopefully we can see some of that move forward yeah yeah and again i forgot one last thing and beth would have told us anyhow office i didn't mention it but we did i think i sent something up but we did get approved for uh to continue really quote-unquote the sort of the universal launch program and craig is really working hard at that and it's working and also he

040and i are meeting tomorrow uh to uh to talk about how we could because remember we've got 150 to 200 kids out there in remote land uh that aren't eating and that's that that's not good from an eating standpoint but it's also i mean they do have the option of coming and grabbing a lunch but generally that's not going to happen so we're going to talk about a way that we might start delivering lunches to the remote population and craig has some ideas that would be sort of cost neutral wouldn't cost a lot of money but uh but but uh again i i i i've eaten lunch every time i'm edit in a building i eat lunch and he's doing he's doing a great job i had some of the best chicken and biscuits that

041i've ever i've ever had the other day and uh it's he's he's just very good at what he does yeah let me know let me know if you need any help with that david happy to think through other solutions and stuff and one thing that i know craig is really reluctant about this but um you can you can bundle meals so you know if you just do twice a week pick up or something like that yeah that's a good bundling meals and those kinds of things so that's that's something as well that i think is is worthwhile for folks because they may come into school twice a week for their meals for the week and and the other things news we could be delivering meals um we can offer them i believe seven days a

042week if we really wanted to which means on fridays we could be sending kids home with with extra meals yeah that's interesting i'll mention that but even with the bundling that's helpful because even if we didn't bundle for pickup but bundled for delivery so we're only delivering yeah that's twice as much yeah exactly it just cuts it in half it's last time yeah so that's good to know yeah and i mean i know craig i think is reluctant and i understand totally you know it's not it's not going to be a pretty looking meal like he presents you know it's not going to look like like coming in from in from craig's kitchen that's for sure um there are certainly hurdles there so if there's nothing else i mean that's really the covet update i

043think we're i think david in regards to the story of from about the nurse and the new support staff and um and i think you said something along the lines of there wasn't contact and so everything could you assure the rest of the board i mean the whole board and uh any public about how that what are the protocols there when you about you guys sharing that with the state of vermont or or not or how does that work yeah they've got uh and this is really what i think makes this work is each of the nurses and i don't know if it's the same person or a different person but they each have a vermont department of health contact person that they've got a 9-1-1 they can they can get through at any time

044day or night and and so that's why it's really that that access is pretty pretty steady and and they really once we've got either you know uh excessive symptoms or concerns symptoms of concern and or a possible positive test i mean we completely follow the vermont department of health guidance and lead around contact tracing announcing whatever we need to announce so i mean that's that's that's really worked and i don't know christine whether you got that experience with a net but i think that's pretty much how how how it works and the vermont department of health has been wonderful i didn't know that they were i thought they might not be able to keep up with the with the with capacity capacity wise once all schools went back but they're doing a pretty good job

045but and they've had positive cases i mean we've heard already cavendish i think hartford uh trying to think that rivendell it's been a few and and and essentially because of the protocols and the contact tracing uh they haven't had to shut any of those buildings down they haven't advocated for that or recommended that much like we wouldn't based on the information we got about this particular staff member we it just was not enough contact and quite frankly the vermont department of health said because they they follow this patient's progress and they said a matter of fact even when you sent that person home they they they weren't infectious at that point you know they they can almost pick a point in time when that person based on the test and the results of the test

046of of when that person was was infectious so so it's it they've been really great with us thank you we we call pretty much every day for something and they're very responsive and i have to say parents have been super flexible i mean kids get congestion all the time and and they're you know really um flexible and just saying yep we'll keep them home if that's what we need to do so we've been really happy with uh bdh on our liaison i see donna's handed up vicky can you see everybody yeah donna yeah hey i just wanted to i guess ask a little bit more on that um staff member like what led him to be talking to the nurse is the nurse checking doing a health check on all staff in the morning it's

047it's a form donna that we have in our calendar okay so we get a ding every morning at six o'clock to take the help um assessment our nurse looks at those every morning i think she looks at them before she leaves her house because she has a 45 minute commute and she's in contact so if you mark down any symptom or um you know an answer to another question on the health check she calls you immediately so the staff member didn't even end up coming to the building that day no and and if they did they would have only gone straight to the nurse's office because they would have been you know they would have been summoned there upon arrival but i think it might have been at the health check station that that that

048that was that was picked up or or in that health check yeah so that seems to work pretty well and those nurses are great if they see a symptom checked off they call right away and and they now have that person said i get migraine headaches all the time and you know right then then they wouldn't have bothered but this was an unusual symptom and they basically said stay home okay great it would just just for the record it was not a heartland stuff but yeah i was just curious like from you know i run daycare excuse me and i've already had to close for common cold you know like i had a child with a cold in my daycare gutter cold and they still had me close really i had to close for three

049days and never once had a fever or anything from it but um i think it's progressed you know it's changed and it's lightened up a little bit since then um but it just made me i wasn't paranoid of if it was heartland so much as just wondering and i didn't know you guys had that protocol of an app or whatever with the nurse and that's that's amazing that's awesome yeah it works just a question around so say a kid comes in stuffy knows whatever needs to stay home what i mean and say they try you know need to get a test and all of a sudden it's like they're out for a week is there and they're you know just because they're trying to get a test waiting for results all those kinds of fun

050things what are we doing to accommodate learning at that time because they're not ill and they can engage in online learning or doing something like that how are we making sure that you know that their kids aren't falling behind with you know just waiting for test results yeah we've had a student out for uh a few days and um it was it's a combination of the teachers you know and they're still getting up and running so a lot of the work that they could share with the student you know it's more community building and they're starting to get into more academic content now but i don't want to say that they can have the child zoom in because we agreed that we wouldn't do that to our teachers in person i think if they if

051they um if they want to i don't know that's a different story i know there are some that are more comfortable you know sharing a virtual lesson that could be you know recorded ahead of time so we're working i think as we get really mindful and specific about what our afternoons are going to look like we're going to be better prepared to do that for kids that are out for the full day as well but teachers are more than willing to you know send work home it's just not a we don't have the zoom into class option at this moment this time i think i think it's a great question though i think we'll get better at it as we go along and i agree christine i think when those afternoons really start to open

052up i mean i think that could be one of the uses for for the for the afternoon i mean even pre-covered right we could have kids out for a long for you know if your child got a bad case of strep or the flu or i mean we've had kids out for a week or two at a time and and i i think we're even more capable now you know than we were before to to try to figure out ways to deal with that um so that they don't they don't fall too far behind okay thank you guys that sounded like a good update and i was actually scott i'm glad you asked about the protocols with the nurse because that led to a good discussion um okay moving on ed i'm putting you on

053the spot we got budget information from the aoe unless david you were talking for red no i don't think so but yeah ed's there yeah are you just on your phone ed no he's he's on video but he might have stepped out because we might have uh yeah he might have fallen asleep on us i don't know i didn't say that you might be eating lunch dinner you can you hear us ed let me i'll give him a quick call just to see what's going on here okay david can you hear me yeah thanks now i got you now we can hear you okay all right so david asked me to give you guys a a quick update on crf um well on tariff money well there is no quick update so i'll try to

054give you an idea of what's going on so we've been working on this since june when the money was awarded i mean i think initially they said there was going to be well there was a two trillion dollar care act and then the two trillion dollar care act gets broken out by state tonight vermont got 1.25 billion then it went to the legislature and the legislature then had to decide how to break that up between the farmers and the business people and all of that and how they did that was they came up with a formula that with long along with following federal guidelines there's a couple of different grants that they have um one is the uh the overriding one is the econo the education stabilization fund which was part of care um when

055we got to that they broke that into uh two other funds which were called esser elementary and secondary school emergency relief and crf which is corona relief funds in addition to that there was money that was set aside from uh and given to um what's the heck of the name uh the vermont um yeah what is the efficiency of vermont efficiency vermont right so efficiency vermont got some money and then the summer food program got some money and all of these were separate applications so the big one that everybody's been talking about the teachers and the principals and everyone is the crf fund which is the crown relief fund which is supposedly going to reimburse everybody everything for what they spent and they didn't spend well let's just take the march through june part of

056this there are crf funds available for the march through june all right so that's actually last fiscal year and what they're doing there is they want us to claim what they call uh unbudgeted cost and repurposed costs okay and they the the guidelines are very very uh vague okay the unbudgeted is pretty straightforward but when we were in fy 19 at fy 20 which was that march through june phase most of the costs associated with uh the care or the coronavirus were actually cuts we didn't add anything we just we paid everybody the same so we really didn't save any money um and we didn't actually spend that much more money because everybody was doing it on the fly and nobody knew how long it was going to last so when it came time to

057do to break out what we did in fy 20 they they want us to do the unbudgeted and repurposed and what they're going to do is they're going to reimburse us that on money 100 percent but how the reimbursement is going to look is it's going to be a revenue in fy 21 the year we're in okay so in a normal school year you get a large amount of money from what they call the state education fund all right in that state education fund what they're going to do is they're going to take anything they reimburse you from fy 20 and they're going to take it off of what they're going to give you in fy fy21 so the savings is going to go to the ed fund everyone understand that the money that you've

058spent in fy 20 say you say i come up with a figure of uh you know 73 000 or 100 000 right or 200 000 for the case apartment they'll reimburse you that money but they're going to lower what they pay from the ed fund by 200 000 so you'll be made whole you'll get what you were supposed to get in fy 21 but the ed fund won't have to pay that 200 000 and that money will fall into next year for the fy 22 budgeting season so essentially i think what ed what what is what tell me if i'm wrong here but everybody knew that the state had been talking about a shortfall in the edge fund right and they weren't sure they were going to be able to make everybody whole this year

059but what but what they're going to do is they're going to use that that cr or a portion of that crf money from march to june and and and that's the and they're going to offset the ed fund payment with respect to that so everybody should ed get the get the uh get there get the normal schedule the budgeted to get from the ad fund in fy21 it just will come from two sources so let's say say that you had a hundred thousand dollars in unbudgeted costs they're assuming this is my this is my editorial i think what they're assuming is that because of the fact that you paid everybody and all of this and that you didn't have to pay certain costs with contracted services and other other savings that you might have realized

060that money they wanted to claw back last year but they ran out of time so how they're getting it back and letting it close the edge is they're going to fund it in 21. they're going to use the 20 numbers they're going to give you the money back in 21 but it's not in addition to okay it's money that they're going to give you back and they're going to lower your headphone pay so that takes care of march through june so all of those costs that we spent the whole spring saying oh this is crf and we had actually stayed designated a way to track those funds and we did that but there's no um real we're not getting reimbursed in addition to okay so now we're looking at now they want july and august

061okay so they want to light up you want that same unbudgeted and repurposed okay so the way they're going to work that is they're saying that they're going to budget they're going to pay you back of the unbudgeted and they're gonna pay they're gonna pay back some of the uh repurpose so the three chunks of time they're looking at are june march through june july and august and then september through december you had to fill out three different applications for this grant and you had to put in support documentation for that so i met with david and larry dower and jim taft to angie and we sat down and i just you know i just started talking about this because i didn't have anyone else to bounce this off because it was getting more complicated

062so then thursday i got an email from brad james who works at the state and as of thursday there's the unbudgeted amount that was reported was 71 000 71 million dollars now it's more than the 50 million they gave you but the legislature has now increased the amount available from crs to 88 million or they're moving in that direction okay so right now from the applications they've got right that's 71 million dollars all right and then he goes on to say that the total excuse me the subtotal for the unbudgeted was 44 million and the repurposed was 27 and he goes on to say that of the 27.2 million that that represents 23 sus that means the 29 sus did not provide information on repurposed costs okay so i bring that up because right now

063there's this huge backlash because there are sus that are capable of producing these numbers and then there's as this thing just highlighted more than half that aren't so it's not equitable and we all know vermont's an equitable state so they're trying to figure out how to make it equitable and when we started talking about it in august there was talk of some type of a formula to send this money out right and now because of the fact that there's this disparity between those that reported and those that didn't report they're starting to bring themselves up so it sounds like they should yeah so over and over again and david and angie that the whole idea that covid will reimburse this is not a given they have not decided how they're going to spend the coveted

064money now the crf money i'm talking about the corona relief fund money is part of the educational stabilization fund right so that crf money is just one element of it and the real the push here is they want us the two things the state needs to do is we have to spend as the state off the crf funds by december 31st okay so they want to do what their goal is if they want us to claim as much as we can an fy20 that march through june because they want that to fall to the end funding fy 22 when we do the budget for next year right but it's to us to the school district it's it's moot in that it doesn't give us any money now it's all future so they're trying to build

065a surplus in the ed fund now there's another bunch of money and it's called um elementary and secondary school emergency relief that's a 31 million dollar grant or that's what it started out to be and that goes through the whole school year so now they're telling us to use as much of the crf money in kansas by december 31st and then after that use the ester money ed when you submitted when you submitted i assume that you submitted both the unbudgeted and the repurposed for rsu yeah okay okay so we're not in one of the and and so ed as far as heartland is concerned right uh the the bottom line which i know is still i think that i don't think the audit's done yet right but the bottom line that you reported i

066have reported for last year that's not going to change that is what it is correct yeah that's you guys ran a 151 000 deficit last year okay it's primarily due to tuition that was that tuition those were the eight or nine kids right we we knew that matter of fact i think it was even a little bit worse a while ago but but 151 000 uh in the red um for last fiscal year and that's not going to change they're in the middle of the audit right now right ed well no we're putting together our audits august october 16th but it's not going to change no it won't change no you're you've always been really pretty much right on the news all the districts in the su i've applied in my applications for 1.3 million

067dollars okay i don't know whether or not we're gonna get all that money in addition to that we've asked for over a hundred thousand dollars from the summer food program and the summer food program is an interesting case that's another application that we did to fill that out sent that in we were one of like 20 well i think it was maybe 20 or 18 supervisory unions submitted an application so they had i believe 12 million program and they only got applications for about i don't know four and so what they did was they said that that's why they have this new thing where they're going to go to the summer program all fall oh they're gonna feed everybody because they set aside of that money they set aside four million of it to fund

068the program but again it's they're holding up our application for the crf funds excuse me for the summer food program funds because they don't think it's equitable that only a certain amount of school districts have put in the application so we're they're fighting about that too and then the last thing is is the um efficiency vermont piece jim taft put in the application for efficiency vermont he was first and he asked for 250 000 of which um we think your your air handlers were kind of antiquated as christine can say and needed a lot of work so jim put a lot of that or all of it into um for this thing air quality and he got 450 or we think he got it from the crf facilities grant and then efficiency vermont kicked in

069another uh 4 000. and i submitted the balance because the bid to fix your school correctly was 145 000 right and we got 107 450 from crf we got efficiency vermont says it'll kick in four and then we've got an amount needed of 33 550. i stuck that into the regular crf grant makes sense so i'm not again i haven't gotten any feedback everything came to a screeching halt last week because the equity issue everybody got really angry there weren't enough applications well how well yeah are they going to try to figure out how to distribute that money before the end of the year or i don't i don't know are they setting that kind of timeline for themselves we're just not going to know for a while they have to do something pretty quickly

070and it's all legislative so the legislation up to something and then the school district and the um aoe will then distribute it based on that formula but we're in line we're in the queue yeah that that's that's the good news is the legendary are we going to get extra money for being early i don't know will it start raining that'd be nice um yeah no i i think you know to to ed and jim's credit and craig i mean they they they were they were early you know jumping on this stuff i mean it's just that the state memphis is the legislature still in session right now i think they might be or did they come out i'm just trying to keep the applications going because they have a new one today yeah i know

071i think i think the legislature's still in session and and they're gonna yeah hopefully finalize things this week but yeah but yeah i mean it's chased it i know i think the the basic takeaways from this is no impact on fy20 last year you're going to end up with that same deficit that you had perhaps some impact this year right both in terms of the the solvency of the ed fund based on those expenses the only thing is is that when you say this year what you're talking about this year is keep in mind we passed the budget before the credit right so we're getting reimbursed for now is costs that were not budgeted right so we're not getting any money we're essentially getting reimbursed and whether so i just said that they raised it

072to 88 million and quickly between the the the the su's that reported we're at 71 million all right and that's not counting everybody okay so i i would say that right now what we what i did well i didn't feel any real compunction to report a lot in fy 20. i reported that pretty well i'd recorded it by the book or by the best book i could get of us for fy 21 the year we're in i was pretty liberal about how i did it but i was doing it in a vacuum you know i didn't really have any input on what were additional costs i mean i got a couple of things a couple of people here a couple of people there and then when i hear you know some of this conversation about

073learning uh distance learning and all that stuff it's all time sensitive if you add these teachers i don't know whether i can put it in the grant right i don't know whether these walkie-talkies and everything else will be covered by crf because it's it's time sensitive right now it's we're pushing the deadline here and there is no real they haven't set a deadline i think they're still holding it open with the hopes that other schools will supply but you know these costs that we're getting now i'm telling i'm still telling you to track it but it really boosts the schools to really put half the brakes on this stuff because you want as an individual school is close to break even or even if the better surplus so when you start next year you're going

074to be in a better place because the funding for next year is totally up in the air depending on how the fall goes and how this whole thing there's so many variables right now so ed that's a good important set the uh i mean i don't want to be the bearer of bad news but i would say you've got to be extremely conservative in your spending and judicious on and evaluate whether or not programs anything that you're doing that can't be done or was done any contracted services or anything like that that aren't providing 100 of what it was when you contracted you know take a look at it and cut it but you or you know make a good decision on that whether you actually need it yeah so ed given what you just

075said october is approaching right and that's usually when we start putting putting budgets together i uh would you be recommending to the building principles and maybe you can reach out to them i don't know but i mean i don't think this is a year necessarily as we go into budget season other than the fixed costs maybe a little bit of an adder for salaries and and health benefits because those aren't going to be stable i mean i think this is time almost to just kind of you know to to move those line items over in just at least level fund at best if not maybe try to reduce some of those at most what what do you think is the best way going forward for next like whenever we talk about the budget we we

076always talk around the crux of the budget the budget christine's not going to find millions of dollars in right supply he's not going to find millions of dollars i mean you can't do anything about tuition tuition is what it is right it really boils down to if you were going to make significant cuts and you all know this it's it's staffing and that's what you have to look at that's really what it i'm not saying it could come to that but to make have any real impact on a budget that's where you've got to go and and it's been the third rail or uh school of finance and that's what that's why i'm saying at this point in time you have to look at how you're providing what you're providing and start making some decisions

077because again i'm not going to christine when i do the budget i essentially take everybody you've got on board now and i give them an increase based on whatever the contract is or whatever they that the the contract looks like it might be so that's where we start and that's you know you put oil in there you put tuition in there and there's then you're done no there's not much there's not much to play with okay we saved some money on that dad oh i know well done 100 dollars the other the other thing that's complicated about this right is that as we go into next year we really we really don't know whether we'll be in this mode or whether we'll be in a little different mode right i mean and we're probably gonna

078go right into the winter and probably close in on town meeting without really knowing right i mean i i think i don't i think that i think any prediction of those kind right now with the election coming up possible back please well we learned in 2020 god knows what's going to happen next yeah i don't know whether to hit to the next year without well i think we'll have more guidance from the state and i think we'll have more uh things my personal feeling is that things are going to start to get better so it will be making it'll make budgeting a little easier but i'm just saying getting better might take three years because there's no there's no speaking of recovery right yeah right but there are some things for example under this modality

079right that we're operating now you know i'm thinking of things christine like you know we hired an lna for every building we we've got those perma subs because we don't want to just have a sub list and we you know there are some things that we specifically did we bolstered up a little bit of our of our clinical work with kids just assuming that there'd be some anxiety we are doing that you know we've got three basically three systems going on the 100 remote the hybrid in person in the in the in the home school and we're already starting to get some inquiries from those homeschool parents about what what they can partake in and i guess i think ed you're absolutely right there's no predicting but i think we probably should assume going into

080fy 22 that the you know it's it's status quo as far as we know and then we just kind of if there are places we can save then let's try to do that but you know but i think i think i think it is what it is right now hey ed ed um ed mentioned contracted services and the thing that sticks out to me is um transportation is something we don't talk very much about except when it comes up and right and you know it's a new fiscal year so we're not talking about uh emergency meal deliveries last spring so there's are so many uh students coming to school with their parents or their caregivers you know um tell us about the renegotiation of the bus contracts in order to save money in fy21 so

081you know that are the buses that there's we've had to cut it in half the amount of buses i mean i mean kids that we can pick up on the buses so a bus normally took 60 kids now takes 30. or less or less right but in in that range right yeah so when you start saying that we're saving money on transportation we're actually not we're running the same amount of buses we did look at it though scott we looked at it very carefully to see if we could go down a bus and we we just couldn't do it and in fact we have a waiting list we want to be on the bus we met with first student last week and had this very conversation about how that would go about it and what

082they said to to uh enforce what christine just said if they can cut a bus they will but they'll do it only in consultation with the principles well the thing that comes the thing that comes to my mind is that what i see as a board member is that there are that they are on nickel and diming the community and all the time in the terms of like um cutting roots shorter because they know that that adds up miles per month and that's cost for them and so if they're not if they're not carrying students for the whole course of the year because their buses are going to be lighter i think we need to uh the school district needs to benefit from that if they have not i just have not put on any

083metaphors they haven't they hired more people to serve our community they have no they but it's like they budgeted every year so when we budgeted and uh we we have the same amount of runs so i i i've had a conversation with them on last week and and any time we can make have a savings they're going to pass on the credit to us but right now they're running the buses as if they were full and they are full given the covid requirements and they're going the same distance as they did before yeah but these are giant trucks they're not full they're they're carrying nothing i mean they're there they're full they're full with the restrictions the school is actually the school has a waiting list now my kids can't take the bus they're on

084the way like we can't get them to bus other than drive because the bus is is full to coven because of the coveted restrictions so that's i mean there's no wiggle room around it i think we're saying the same thing beth i mean the bus company ought to be moving students for heartland school district they they are i'm not upset about it i'm saying that it's i would be more upset if i heard that they were packing the stu the students in there with more students than what they're supposed to be and going against the coveted restrictions then i would be very upset about that i'm much more pleased about that so i'm not i'm not understanding how you how you're saying that they're not carrying students they need more machines oh you mean they

085might need more you need more machines it's gonna cost us additional money yeah yeah but then we pay more but yeah but you see they're not fairly accounting for the work they're doing you see they're driving around half full and they're calling it they're calling it you know they're they're kind of hiding behind the covered restrictions state won't let us do it any differently yeah but i think we know what scott's saying what's scott's saying i mean i'm not i'm not i'm not advocating for your logic scott but i i hear what you're saying i think what scott is saying is that in a normal year right let's say they transport you know 600 700 kids all right 600 kids you know and they charge us this amount to transport those kids now in the

086covert year they're transporting 240 kids at 150 kids right so where you know where is the in other words if they were charging us per kid we'd be getting really in trouble instead i think scott this is where i think the logic might break down a little bit is they charge per run in per mile so they're still doing those runs they're still doing those those pickups with a lot less kids and quite frankly we've got other adults on that bus now because of the health checks so they're not doing as much as much discipline or as much you know i mean i i hear what you're saying that it's uh and and that's why ed and i met with them last week because we wanted to get clear on on on what what and

087and and it's a good thing we met because ed will tell you that there were a couple of places like for example weathersfield did was able to come down a bus they weren't able to run a bus in windsor to drive our cornish kids because they got because the bus driver couldn't get a license because dmv was under covert restrictions and they told us they'll credit that guy's now starting back again but they'll cr they'll credit us back i don't know whether we're at a point yet scott to do what you suggested we might be at some point but and that's kind of like to renegotiate okay wait a minute guys you were you were hauling you were hauling 650 kids now you're hauling 250 kids even something as simple as and this would be

088a stretch but i drove a bus for a while and truck you know if you have less weight on those buses you're also burning less gas right i mean it's it's it's it's interesting that you could make an argument for something like that depending on how long we stay in this crazy condition but uh but i but i i i think it's a tree uh you want to keep barking up to some degree scott but i think we need to let's give it another couple of weeks because we did say we'd meet again with them once once things had settled because uh it it's uh you know it's a it's a potential issue there i mean i think i mean i don't i don't think they're yeah i i think we just need to watch

089it and be careful of it i mean i'm glad you and ed are keeping track of that i would never advocate not being safe or or going off from the vermont department of health guidelines for students or anything like that i i just think that this is uh transportation uh maybe slightly different in a public school setting but it still has its um components of of it being uh i want to say it's like a it's an experiment in in uh physics class too yeah well the other thing too is you have uh yeah i mean you have a vermont vermont lars vermont lawrence basically says you may transport kids it doesn't say you necessarily have to transport kids but you know i want to i'm an advocate of i know it's possible i know

090and i don't know what what the buses cost us in heartland but i know that the whole contract is is it's a fair amount of money there's no question about it it's at least two three hundred thousand dollars you know per district and there yeah but but i know ed's on top of it with the bus company he set the meeting up with them and myself and so we'll we'll just we'll just keep we'll just keep we'll keep riding that one no pun intended but we'll we'll try to stay on top of that so i had a question on a budgeting standpoint um we have never tried to predict how many students were going to move in district um for high school choice and that really burned us um this last year and i think

091that there is some capability of predicting that i mean we know how many students we have like we can figure out how many students are attending waldorf or some other private school that might be apt to pull out of private school when they can take advantage of school choice um and i'm just i kind of wanted to look to the board and see what you guys thought of that and i wondered if that was something that we could task linda with calling some of the local private schools to see how many heartland kids were in the end nick nikki can i just can i just say one thing about that i mean part of the reason why we try to predict every year is so tight that to add an extra tuition lowers the money

092that's available to k-8 okay so every dollar additional money that you put into tuition you take a dollar away from k-8 if you wanted to keep your budget so in the past we used to budget that way we used to budget and we'd say we're gonna budget for six extras or ten extras at the state average to accommodate anybody who might move in but over the years we've come to the point where we can't trying to put in an extra hundred thousand dollars for four extra kids or six extra kids that's a lot of money taken away from k through eight but it's up to the board to decide if you wanted to do that it's just again the next year yeah well i think i i think what the other thing is i think

093what nikki's saying too is not so much take like just some sort of an educated guess at how many might move in but i think what she's talking about are people already living here but they're accessing either homeschool or private schools and and i think we you know i think if we know there are three or four of them and and and linda can reach out do you plan to go to high school next year a public school and and they say yes and we can identify two or three of those we probably ought to count those i'm not so i agree with ed in terms of just let's yeah because those move-ins are so un unpredictable but i do think that but i think a bunch of the kids that we had this year

094were living in district previously they were either waldorf kids or home school kids mostly waldorf i think that's possible that's fun like and i agree with you that it takes away from k-8 but for example in this current budgeting season we took away from k-8 because of what we did last year so you're taking it away like if we continue this trend then we're just going to keep taking it away from the next year whereas we could also just look to budget for what's we're actually predicting is going to happen yeah because we're going to have to wait do you think that this is a little bit of an anomaly year though too because you know you have parents not wanting to pay for private school if they're gonna go remote right and they're gonna

095be at home anyway and you also had i mean dan's a real estate agent and the amount of houses he's selling is phenomenal so you have a lot of kids moving in um to heartland all the local schools i know woodstock was got hit hard this year with move-ins um because of outer staters coming in so you know this is definitely a year that um i don't think we can base future predictions off of this year either so no we're not talking about last year um right the nine extra students that we didn't account for but a lot of them had already lived here so we should have been able to account for them and we should have probably done a better job guessing i will say this i i think you're going to find

096what britney said is true because one of the big draws there's no houses for sale in heartland and it's a lot of it's because you guys have choice and you're close to the upper valley and they think that's a trend that we've seen seeing over the last five years there's a lot of people that move in yeah they used to move into west windsor to take advantage of high school choice so that's going to be we have our numbers our numbers are already up for high school tuition this year are they already oh yeah yep i think i i i'm just trying to remember because linda and i were doing the count i mean we've lost a couple but we're still up more than we anticipated it doesn't surprise me yeah does not surprise me

097and maybe we could moder you know mitigate that a little bit nicky by by doing something like that and christine you could you know certainly talk the lender and see if there's a way to do that but i think we're going to see in the next year or two given all this covert down country stuff i i think you're going to see a lot more people moving up north and uh yeah and heartland will get get impacted um yeah i think it's i think it's worth looking at totally and highly unpredictable but i think it's i think it's worth taking you know it's one of your biggest fixed expenses other than salary and uh and and and medical benefits right i mean it's it's kind of out there and transportation like scott said you've only

098got a few you've only got a few large chunks of money and that's one of them sorry it looked like um when we when we looked at the enrollment numbers that we are about to graduate a very large class so that will help that's a good thing it looks like that class was about kids and the incoming class is significantly smaller so that might help us sort of smooth out some of that increase um and then the other the question that always comes up for me too when we have these discussions is when do we get the the increased enrollment count right kicks in there's like a one-year delay on that right so if we have 10 kids move in we're for that year it's a hit but then the next year we have 10

099more kids on our on our rolls and we divide our whole budget by that amount for the purposes of state aid so you know it there is a one-year delay with the tuition that seems uh you know i there there might be some ways to sort of think about budgeting for that and kind of smoothing that out until we benefit from it the next year now well you know the problem though sarah too is that you don't benefit one for one from that right so the adm goes up by 10 but remember that adm and the block grant per adm is capped at only a three percent increase so heartlands may go up 150 000 but you're allowable is a lot less than that it's one of the downsides of a cap right but yeah

100but but yeah but i think you're right i mean it's it's you do carry those kids from that from that point uh from that point forward um yeah i think it's just something i'm gonna have to wrestle with i know that christine and ed and linda i think can um you know we can get a little more exacting and keep i think christine since you've arrived you've you've really pushed this a little bit on tuition you seem you really get it and and you kind of push linda to do what has to happen i think we just need to you know get that list as accurate as we can and if we can find some of those kids in waldorf settings uh and i agree with sarah if you've got a 54 class going out

101in a i don't know that's a pretty good net right theoretically but yeah you know uh maybe that'll help this year it did it didn't as much last year but it but it but it might i just know we've got to get serious and ed it's one of the things you and i can talk about this week i mean we've gotta you and i have got to come up with a strategy you you've done a great job working with the building principles over the last several years and just kind of you know getting it getting it to a point where we can deliver a budget to the board you know i you know i i don't i again each board is different but i don't think this is going to be a year for a

102lot of you know budget committees and looking at you know i think we're just going to really as a board have to take a look at it early you know once the all this all this cares money stuff settles and and then just bring the voters the best budget we can bring them in the in the spring based on all the uncertainty hey sarah brings up a really good point about the um about the uh our adm numbers and it makes me think about the um discussions in the last couple years um about what whether or not there's going to be a new um metric or a new new equalized pupil number i mean a new system um right are we in the state working on a new well somebody was before covert hit i

103don't know if they killed yeah they were looking at a new more a new more equitable matter of fact there was going to be a rural factor in that right for our district i think i mean i wanted to get lost in the weeks because this is a really it's a really big deal it is for me and i think it is for our school district that we're sitting here talking about k through 8 excuse me um that includes kids pre-k through 12. but the high school tuition part is an obligation of our district for four years and if it starts with a one year like we are feeling right now you see it's very hard to regroup that when you have um kind of a tendency on the public side to uh you know

104move to heartland for the high school tuition years you know it is a great benefit and sarah points it out for sure you know it's a great big benefit if those kids are moving in the elementary school and they're going to be on our rolls for years more than a decade and so but just the high school years it's it's worth a you know the community really scrutinizing that because um it comes with exact the hurt that we're feeling right now the unexpected um nature of it in st johnsbury scott we we call those people carpet baggers right they come in with a foot of four years and then they'd leave they didn't contribute to the community i mean you hate the judge like that but you know sometimes for those folks it was cheaper

105for them to buy a house and pay that mortgage for four years or eight years if they wanted to send their kids to you know whatever hanover k.u kua and you know rather than um you know rather than pay pay the tuition themselves so but i don't think what i found out in st johnsbury there's no stopping that if people want to move into choice towns and they can move in in the freshman year sophomore year whenever they want to move in and guess what we're going to write that check so it's uh it's sad but it it's it's just that it's one of the downsides of being a tuition town but also if you look at like i mean i agree with what you guys are both saying and the um the challenge in

106budgeting [Music] when you don't know for the budgeting for the unknown is incredibly difficult and i think that that is a huge downfall but when you look at the actual expenses it's not like we don't have control of those expenses but the expense is not dramatically different and so um you know per student it it kind of rolls right in with what we're doing right now and so yes it's a big challenge and yes it's unpredictable but the cost per student is not different right right and we still the other the other good news is i i think it's good news although it hasn't been too good the last couple of years but one of our other largest expenses which is scheduled special education it's a fixed cost but you know we continue to share

107that at the supervisory union and i would argue that it's it's it's been one of our best experiments because i know that we've some of our smaller schools including heartland you know would not be able to do what they do with the support personnel and the number of case managers you know when i arrived nine years ago you had two case managers at heartland that they were handling all your special ed kids i mean now you've got four or five that would have been a huge staff increase for for just the taxpayers of heartland but uh you know i i think that's been i think that's been been good too i mean it's and it's it's just can we control those costs is the other end of that but you know we got to keep

108trying to do that yeah so we did reduce the number of bis did that reduce the number of bis that um heartland yeah i think christine you would know but i think i think overall well we also used a different model with the bis we're not contracting right with hcrs anymore because we were finding that you know that was it wasn't as cost effective as we thought we were paying almost 35 to 40 000 for each contracted bi and i think now you know it's it's more in the set twenty thousand dollar range depending on whether they take benefits not a thirty thousand dollar range so we'll see where that all sugars off do you have less bis in your building now christine we have uh three local and one i believe which one is

109still hcrs yeah yep yeah so i think as i think about last year i think we're around the same it's just a different um we're not contracting out yeah we're all of them but the other thing i think as an administrative team we can analyze too and this is you know this will be controversial but i think depending on how we predict the future of this arrangement and schedule and having kids in pods and the stuff that brittany was talking about which creates you know i think everybody expected that when kids came back and i don't get me wrong i'm not downplaying this but that we were gonna have a lot of academic regression we were gonna have kids who were just anxious and paranoid we were going to have kids families that were falling

110apart because of unemployment i mean now granted there's some of that out there but i don't know if we if we you know we whether we assumed more of that and i think because you know just a simple example i mean even from the from the wellness side we went out and hired an lna for every building i mean i don't i don't know if if over the long haul we're going to need that we we've got all these interventionists sort of running around and behavior seis and bis and i mean i i think at some point we may need to look at that and decide as ed has said whether or not you know because we're wrapping around students a little better whether we're gonna whether whether we're really gonna need all of that

111i mean i don't wanna i don't wanna sound like a like a curmudgeon but i think i think we do need to take a a poke at that and look at that um yeah dude i hear what you're saying and i would just say we need to give this time we're third weekend you know just started our third week um i know the exhaustion level i'm seeing in my family is like my kids are getting about 11 hours of sleep a night like and they they asked to go to bed like so i have a feeling you know like i asked to go to bed as well and um and i think it's go i think this is one of those things where it's families just can't do this for forever and so i think

112we're gonna start seeing cracks in the facade you know because it's still new it's interesting it's different um but it's that's it's going to get old real fast and as soon as we have to shut the doors and it's 20 below um i want every support staff possible hanging around my mouth looks so pretty huh yeah i was in a meeting sorry is that an assistant to nurse to the nurse when you were talking earlier i was wondering about how the nurses are feeling in terms of their workload like it sounds like they're taking on a lot more than they certainly did before that's absolutely true and i think the helping with that christine would you agree with that yep yep it allows annette to make those calls every day on you know symptoms and

113a lot of time on the phone yeah and help us we actually shifted our we shifted her out of uh she was running the health check three but we pulled her out of that role so that she could uh be called upon when a kid has arrives with a symptom so she can make that call so yeah but i will say i was i was at a meeting with dave ormiston last week um and he did report the taxes were due i believe and they actually collected more than they the prediction was so he was yeah he was pleased um that's great yeah that's good so okay yep yeah thanks for watching yeah ed thank you we'll uh look for more from you later thanks ed you're free or free to stay on more money

114that is dead now he's sleeping he might have already signed off i don't know um okay so we're gonna move on to um acceptance and understanding okay oh actually thank you let me just text alyssa uh yeah so we'll move on to the principles report um and acceptance and understanding um and i i am as chair going to call a three-minute break so while christina um i i'm seeing a lot of yawning i need to vote 743 y'all have three minutes to hit the restroom get your coffee water and uh do 10 jumping jacks yeah and i think i'll let the i'll let the recording keep recording right yeah that's fine three minutes okay good virtual break oh uh so thank you okay wow um hey guys it is 7 46. if anyone can hear

115me i'm back there we go hello there's colleen it was great maybe three minutes isn't enough but i've decided that i'm not sitting through three hour meetings without a break anymore and i will thank you i i wasn't joking about the jumping jacks i just did 20. just need to move i can't get in the chair okay we'll get everybody back all right i texted alyssa let's see if she's awesome she's on her way whole purpose but we need it what's she doing is she chat with the acceptance and understanding yep you guys hear me stuff my toe on the way up the stairs though i heard something i wasn't sure what it was but i didn't hear something i asked for a pair of socks and turned her socks so they're like crazy slippery

116and i was of course because your feet are cold because my feet are freezing yeah my feet are cold too and i had to move so bad i sprinted up the stairs so yeah when your feet are cold your whole body's cold or mine are anyway yes exactly yeah that's why i begged for them to bring me socks earlier yeah yeah uh david you might well i think alyssa can just get in she's got a wsesu account she should come right in she should be able to come right in did you you sent her the link right now she has it it's on the agenda she must have it i'll i'll make sure she doesn't either yeah make sure she's got the link that's small and nikki i'll touch base i mean i don't know

117how much we need to talk about this today but i'll touch base with you when i get the feedback back from ed about um that that that auditor the auditor from vermont auditor because that i think that's a mistake but i'll i'll i'll chase it i was kind of taken aback by it it doesn't make it it doesn't make any sense i'm pretty sure we always pay that tuition and i know when i was in saint john's body 20 years ago we were paying whatever they charged at that point so that's not a new yeah that's not a new uh event i'll uh i'll quickly bring everybody up to speed and beth you can write this down um because i guess an agenda edition um i got an email today from a state auditor from

118the state auditor's office asking why we paid the full tuitions at that part academy um because the state auditor's office was counting them as an independent school and right now our assumption is that they're one of those public private schools and so our all collectively of us assumed that we had to pay the public tuition um to them so david's going to follow up on that yeah beth did you get enough out of that okay awesome okay so moving on to the principles report which will include our acceptance and understanding anti-racism task force updates okay yeah and i'm going to go through it really quickly because most of it we've covered but i'll just present my my screen i shared it with you earlier so you should all have it well that's weird that popped

119up huh you can can you see my screen you can see it right perfect okay oh because i hit the share button not the present button that's why yeah okay so just uh quickly you can glance at these um scott had sent an email wondering about numbers uh for enrollment purposes so you can see um just the breakdown in person and how many kids we have in home study and private school those are that's up as a friday and we will be having some some changes just so you know and then i asked linda because i we are on the high school tuition um we were surprised by the nine additional high school students last year so we're trying to keep a close eye on exactly who we have and where so i can't see

120you but if you have any questions just just shout out i'm going to go rather quickly oh so i don't know where those students live we're paying tuition for them but we haven't confirmed that they actually live in heartland yeah um they're on the voucher list but linda is doing her due diligence to double check i feel that we have an accurate count and this and this is the time to do that due diligence because we don't pay the first invoice until usually october yeah so we want to make sure and i'll tell you we get some wild stories about where people live and you know blah blah and you know there's not really a good way to always check it but the onus of of of the burden of proof is on them not

121on us so if we suspect they don't live there then we'll just say we need more information right and a lot of times they can't provide it christine can you thank linda for us i will absolutely i really appreciate that i'm sure it's worked but that is actually what she knows everybody too so yeah she's a good person to do it so yeah she'll continue to do that and i'll ask her about um looking into uh private school numbers as well just to see if we can get a more accurate count thank you okay yep um i just had to put a plug out because we are really using the outdoors i actually had an email from one of our teachers of uh in the middle school who was just saying she wasn't going to

122thank kovid but she's been outside um and really really uh enjoying it the kids are kids are just thriving outside so this is just yeah cooperated too yeah and we did we were featured in a um article so i just posted that link in case you want to peruse that but making the best of the outdoor spaces i was actually down in the woods today and it's just joyful so it it warms my heart to have the kids out there learning and the teachers too um so acceptance and understanding um alyssa's here and she can um open her mic i'll just briefly say which i've shared with you before that there was um we did a book study this summer on uh the book white fragility with robyn d'angelo and she alyssa was part of

123that book study there were 32 staff members that took part and we've had this acceptance and understanding committee going for this will be our third year um and we've been doing this work and you know we're not experts but we're doing our best and the committee has committed to leading part of our staff meetings this year and we started with um a presentation last tuesday and it was really kind of a sharing out of um what people have what people gained and learned and what surprised them and um um what they what they took their big takeaways from the book study over the summer and then we watched a little clip um uh you can see the in the screen there and then the committee really just um they had a form for the staff

124to fill out you know which which direction do you really want to go what's really important to talk about or what's coming up for you so that is in a nutshell where we're at and alyssa is here to talk a little bit more i'm going to unshare my screen because the rest of the presentation is really um survey information from um the first week of school that the staff took and angie covered that at our su board meeting last week but you can look at the comments i put a few comments in as well and let me just see if i can so i can see you i'm gonna interject really quickly um before melissa does um i just wanted to update the um anti-racism task force um the there were a bunch of you

125who were not able to come to the su board meeting um at the su board meeting we voted to create an anti-racism um task force and right now it's composed of four members um colleen myself amy um and sean um i happen to be all board chairs plus colleen thank you colleen um so right now it's just it's a small committee of board board members who are going to get together and figure out how to make the next steps um the really exciting piece um there was davidson jameson davis took me a while um so he is a vermont law school student who has been working um in kind of a community service um grant program to help um schools understand anti-racism and to create um policies and to create education materials for the schools

126um he was just really fantastic and energizing and um he was at the su board meeting and um honestly i feel a little bit lost in creating an anti-racism policy and um he just really made it feel um like he would be there to support us and to give us guidance and uh to help us figure out how to move forward and so that is where that's going um and i am frankly really excited and i'm excited um that heartland has two representatives and i'm excited that we have somebody who's both an expert in or growing expert in the law um and a member who's experienced racism himself and can really guide us forward so so that's really exciting and i just wanted to give that update i'm sorry to cut you off alyssa but

127i think that's important so i'll turn it over thanks guys i appreciate you inviting me in um i'm really excited about what the acceptance and understanding committee is doing i think that book club that we had over the summer was kind of just the beginning it was interesting to see a lot of teachers kind of change their perspective as they kept reading um and a lot of them felt like that they were learning something new and um it's gonna be interesting to see where everyone's going within their own learning and kind of like think he was saying we all kind of feel a little lost especially since we kind of don't have the experiences that people of color do so i think having more things like that is going to be really helpful for staff

128and eventually students to kind of get on board with this and and kind of get to a more not to sound corny but accepting and understanding place so um but a reason why i am here is to kind of touch upon something like that so staff members are obviously making virtual classrooms because we are a hybrid model so some of us will be or most of us will be working in the afternoon um and i have created an entire like school counselor office using google slides and a bitmoji and the first slide that you come up to in mine is um like my own office setting i've actually pulled pictures to make it kind of look like my office some things on the walls in my actual office or on my virtual office and one

129of the couple of the things that i have on a bulletin board are um notes that i can give to staff and students as well as a black lives matter sticker and a lgbtq flag and it's a newer lgbtq flag that kind of includes black and brown to include people of color and within those photos i have links that lead to racial equity resources which i have not completed yet but it will be like a google doc and then i link the cdc info for lgbtq resources i think it's really important that i have those resources on there because we do have two students that i know of that identify as trans and non-binary i have already linked one of those parents with a lot of resources last year for their kiddo and i think

130that if there are kids particularly in the middle school age or parents who are kind of looking for that but are a little scared to ask having that right there is going to be really useful for them so i wanted to seek the board's approval to use those images and allow staff members to use those images with the current political climate i wanted to make sure that i'm doing this the right way and i want to make sure that it's okay that i use these images before it goes live so that is uh why i'm here today i don't want to take up any more of your time because i know you guys have been working late um and i guess i will leave it to you guys yeah one thing i would like to

131say alyssa is um first of all thank you for your service and for the courage that you've you know you've got to the school and your participation in a lot of these issues of equity and and uh you know i think you've been you've been a great advocate for for people who have you know maybe a little bit of a lesser voice or don't feel safe and i also want to congratulate you for coming to the right place to make this request i know you and christine talked about it and christine uh directed you to the board because really on matters like this that are uh potentially politically attacked uh somewhat charged with you know understood politically charged right i mean you know you our communities are really in a in a learning modality right

132they a lot of them haven't done the book talks that our staff did and haven't so i really think that the place to advocate for these kinds of signs and symbols and and statements is at the school board level because you are representing the community and you do have a sense of readiness of the community for this sort of i mean i know i know in a lot of other communities who have decided to either you know change their mascot emblem to be less less you know racially charged or they want to fly a black lives matter flag on school grounds they come to the board and the board engages in that discussion and then a decision is made so i i i just wanted to congratulate you for you know for going slow with

133this for coming to the board and i think it i think i'll shut up now and it's really time i think for a very healthy discussion and decide whether or not we're at a point of of readiness in our community to have our virtual classrooms or some of them have that kind of a of of an image i don't think anybody here would argue with the resources and you've been great about providing the resources it's just really around the imaging and and what are we ready for at this point so i'll stop and it's up to you now to and christine i don't know if you wanted to add to that or not but i think it's no i i think i think you hit the nail on the head david it's whether or not

134the board believes the community is ready for the to tackle this it will be controversial there's no question um as as in my experience from doing this work for a little bit i mean it's not that it's not the right thing to do it's just it's it's gonna be controversial so we have to be ready for that so i see him but i'm not facilitating so yeah i mean i i there's no question for me about this i see this is exactly the same thing as you know many teachers put um the lgbtq flag on their door to acknowledge that that they are it's an opening and welcoming space it's an affirming space for for kids um and if if a teacher put a black lives matter just a simple statement of black lives matter

135on their door uh to indicate to their students of color that their lives matter um i don't think we i i don't i don't see any problem with that and i see this is the same thing um this is nothing to me it's not even that political it's just we're making a statement that um we are enough this is an affirming and supportive place for both kids uh who are lgbtq and for for people of color in our community so um yeah no no question for me and and that's what i'm kind of using it for i want to make it clear that i'm not supporting a political movement i am supporting the statement right go ahead beth um yeah i i sarah a hundred percent i think that's absolutely accurate and um i mean

136i was teaching back in 98 and as a quiet down there christine and uh i i threw up my like everyone is welcome sticker on my front door you know of my classroom back then and i didn't get pushed back back then you know so i don't like so part of me is like is the community ready and and the other part of me says i it doesn't matter i mean it matters and it doesn't matter it's an old idea of like this is these are the beliefs of this school we are an inclusive school we are an embracing school all are welcome these are the ideas and ideals of our society so it's not it's not a question of are we ready um you know it's just so it's it's it's being i don't

137know if it's saying being brave enough but just saying this is this is the ideals of our school like this is this is the ideals of our community this is ideals of my home i mean like everyone is welcome you know like it's just that and and i think yeah it's political and there may be pushback um but as a board member i'm i'm ready for that i'm not i'm not concerned i'm i'm fully accepting of that i mean this is this is why i would be um i would be really disappointed otherwise i think had to find my mute button yes definitely put them up but i think um and they both do the same thing you're right to make people feel safe my um wife works at the va i think you guys

138all know that and we recently had the white house did some other some crazy things some of the um stuff that's been coming out of the white house about using diversity training for whatever has led to her having to be a little bit more careful about some of the stuff that she's having to say which you know is just the world we're living in right now she just started up a book club as well i don't know what they're reading it's not white fragility but something about race um and she's been you know she's not gonna stop doing it but she does you know you know when i lose your job either um she's not gonna talk about she's leaving politics out of it there's a long way to say you know i would think

139that conversation around black lives matter right now could be tricky in school but um but what but saying black lives matter is important to do over and over again are you ready to have those conversations i met i imagine you already do have those conversations with kids at school absolutely i'm 100 ready to tackle those conversations with both kids and adults it sounds like alec and nicola they've been having in their class of some back and forth with one of the teachers specifically about that that sounds like it's been handled really well but you know i know kids bring home bring them what they hear at home so there's lots of opportunities to learn new things right and it's not my job to force my political opinion on people i guess that's what i was

140getting at was i know that you'll i know you i know you won't but i you know i know that that's what kids come in with i don't know that they know the difference between the two like you know i mean my job is me you know think and question some of um each other's thoughts and listen to other opinions i'm not gonna look at a kid and tell them that they're wrong i will not accept any hate speech towards any myself or any of my students but kids are entitled to their own opinion whether those opinions are coming from themselves or their parents so i'm prepared to have them a question and have them wonder and knew to look into it but i'm not going to tell them listen you need to be a

141liberal or nothing else that's not that's not my job it's too bad we can't do that but but i am but i'm just being recorded in my office space whether well obviously they can't be physically there but virtually and um my lgbtq students like they need to feel like they have a safe place to talk about um i think those signs make a big difference not to talk over you but i just we had this conversation you know everything's on facebook but um about having these signs in our yards i don't put any signs in my yards because the only person that's going to see it is angie as she goes by because i've got like three more people that go by but um but i do have amazon and fedex drop off stuff every

142day and imagine being a person of color that's walking up to how an unknown house in this time and seeing that sign and feeling better because they see that sign i mean i just think i think being advocates in this time is is really important to do i mean and i'm seeing people be more open-minded you know we have um a kiddo who just recently decided they want to change their pronouns and identify as non-binary and the teacher naturally understand why they had to use they because grammatically that's not correct so i've had to explain what that means and what it meant and i used um a metaphor that helped them understand it and they seemed really appreciative because they just haven't done that research i want teachers i want parents and i want students

143like they could ask those really uncomfortable questions about crowns or race or uncomfortable situations involving the two yes that's the point for me personally that i would use the stickers for scott do you want to weigh in are you yeah yeah nice to meet you alyssa thank you thank you so much i think we've only i can remember your face from maybe a year ago yeah and video zooms in no no in the library in the library oh thank you anyways yeah i'm i'm in support of what you're asking completely um thank you so much again for asking it on the where this comes down with me is that i think it's one of these uh moments where there's a need for action and anti-racism demands that there are anti-racists willing to do the correct

144uh um [Music] act correctly that's what i'm trying to say and so it's it's there's no i say yes immediately to your um question i do think that it's important for people that look like we all do on this screen to temper our excitement and our ambition because that's something i've done a little bit of reading on i mean i mean a tiny bit of reading on being an overpowering you know excited white person who's supposed to be an ally can um can be um cannot be can be unhelpful um i would not want to rain on this parade it just as a board member i would not want to bring any any situ any dangerous situations to our school district i think that that is going to be wholly in the um taken care

145of by our administrators and teachers who are the trained educators here to know how to um to go forward but you know definitely with your question um yes and personally you know when when when christine says there will be pushback i have no idea like i can't think of any any reason why that would be but i believe you christine the personally my my experience in the last about a year ago was walking to damon hall be you know that um the state road signs right next to the bank where you'd be a stop sign right there um and so i saw on twitter that there had been a patriot front um tagging in our town and there were postcards on the town crier over by the post office and there were stickers like put

146on the back of the state road signs and if you look up patriot front and white supremacy message that they espouse it's just absolutely abhorrent i mean i mean it's i don't this stuff that we think is like from the great big outdoor world is um all over all all over the places in our community so we have to be actively pushing back um so i so i um i didn't want to blindside the board with this discussion today so i sent out a little preview um so that the board members could think about it and i um i have to say that i am really excited about what you guys all said um because i had initially my reaction was definitely we need to do this like and then then there was the tempered

147side of i don't want to bring um pain and hardship on any of us because we will likely get blow back and um and so then there's that part of me and hearing the other four board members um and their reaction makes me all the way back to where i was and wholeheartedly yes go for this and that um it's our job as board members to to be in front of things and um and to to do what's right and that's that's the debate that i've been having all day since i sent out the email giving the board members a preview is how do you how do you do what's right and doing what's right is doing what's right and supporting the people um supporting people that need support um the other thing that i

148did quickly um in response to something that somebody said is that um is i googled um particularly if black lives matter is a political organization um and according to um a legal opinion it is not um and they are a organization for social change which is completely appropriate um but according to this legal opinion they are not um a political or partisan organization and um federal employees are allowed to show support for black lives matter um and that right there seals the deal like no questions no like i'm i'm all in um and i'm all in on the lgbtq too as well go ahead sarah i i just wanted to say say to alyssa and to christine and and david that um you know as a board member we we will back you up if

149um if this does if this does somehow result in some blow back i you know i i suspect that i don't think there's going to be any blowback on on the lgbtq sticker i suspect that the blowback if it happens will be um you know what i see as a really false um a false dichotomy or uh about support for law enforcement and black lives matter and i would just say that you know i think if you if we even get to the point where we're having that conversation um something has gone very wrong because showing support for black lives matter in no way shows a lack of support for law enforcement and we can talk about systemic racism and failures of of certain law enforcement entities um in in parts of this country without

150it being any sort of a an attack on law enforcement families in our community and if if there are people in our community who draw us into that discussion and put those two things on opposing sides then we need to take a giant step back and not even engage in that in that sort of false debate between those two things because that is not what it's about and um you know i'll i will make that point to anyone if you if you need me to um so i you know we've got your back it sounds like and um thank you i mean in terms of that at the end of the day i have black students and i have lgbtq students i don't have cop students so that is a reason why i don't have

151a blue lives matter sticker on my office cork board because i don't serve police officers i serve black students i serve gay and trans students and that is why those resources are there um and so i thought about it being uncomfortable too with people who may seem uncomfortable and they want to give me some pushback but if if i'm uncomfortable what's it like for a black person who experiences the same thing it's even more uncomfortable and me having the opportunity to hide from that uncomfortable feeling is the definition of privilege so i'm ready to face that head on and and be happy to have any emails forwarded my way and i will be the person to defend my own actions all day well and we do law enforcement families in our school and i think

152we i think we absolutely support a hundred percent those families and and to even be drawn into a conversation where by saying black lives matter someone might think that you would be showing less support for those families um is is absolutely false and we you know as i said we just have to take a giant step back there and um and really you know do some do some education i think um at that point so yeah yeah i i think the resolve that you've shown tonight in in this decision is exactly why this is where the decision has to be has to be made and i think sarah you especially but a couple of you have have identified exactly i mean i i i agree 100 i don't think the lbgtq uh uh is going

153to be as uh potentially uh controversial as the blm and part of it is part of it is you know it's wrapped around that whole issue of of law enforcement and and i think that what not completely there are other pieces to it too but i think the part the educational part of this with with communities and i had a very long conversation today with a member of of one of our communities uh who does not agree with a whole bunch of things but that's another whole story but i mean we have to understand that that you know some of what's been politicized and some of what triggers the lbgt community the the the uh the black community are things like thin blue line or blue lines blue lives matter or or all lives matter

154those are trigger in the racial community in the in in the black and brown community those are racist sort of comments right now they don't they may not be intended that way it's sort of what we're working through at moniscutane right now but but the bottom line is it's critical and it's crucial and i think the board just has to be ready for that type of of of of pushback and that type of forum for education if you know if if it comes our way but i think the resolve tonight says that you're ready for that conversation and uh um you know because one of one of the things in another community that uh we dealt with was around you know kid you know making political statements kids wearing trump hats or staff members wearing

155trump hats or biden pins or or or a thin blue line hat you know i mean basically the attorney said you know um you know that that's not you know no no political statements should be made and quite frankly some of those things that i just mentioned are political statements i don't think blm and i think you've got it right there nikki in terms of you know you you google it it's it's it's not a political organization it doesn't it you know it it doesn't you know and i think there's a big difference between much like with everything the militant side of that that movement versus the movement itself and if you go if you go to that website and you read the you read all of the guiding statements i mean i don't know

156who on god's good earth could disagree with any of those guided statements is there is there a malicious sect that holds the blm as the yeah maybe but that's not what we're talking about we're talking about making a safe space for kids of color and you sound like you've got that resolve but you just got to be ready you know as we've learned a lot in the last several months you got to be ready to have that educational conversation and to and take the pushback and and so i i think that it sounds like you are ready for that so i we probably i don't know how we would turn this into a motion but we probably should have some sort of emotion that indicates uh you know uh the approval of uh safe space

157symbols including black lives matter and lbgtq on our virtual classrooms or classroom doors um i don't know if somebody wants to make a motion like that i think it just it just documents it in the minutes it it it covers a list that was well well-worded david yeah is that is that just virtual i mean you said in our virtual world sit on doors and virtual doors yeah doors yeah so i think the motion would be how are you doing do you need david to repeat that we're gonna pause she's in the typing mode now she got it well she types it i just have to uh say how um how proud i am of alyssa i don't think i mean she is a leader on this on this um on these issues in our

158school and she's stepped up and she she is uh educating people and in a way that is kind and understanding and draws people in um so just really couldn't be more proud and super um excited that the board is is standing behind this and we can move forward so we know we have a lot of work to do we know we have um there there will be questions for parents we've we've already had questions around around these issues and we um we're happy to draw them in as well so so what i have is a motion is emotion was made to allow black live matters and lgbtq symbols of support in our virtual and physical learning spaces i think david said something before that david you said um symbols um uh i think she captured

159it i think uh okay i think she captured it i think that sounded good yeah i think she wanted it a little different but it sounded right support spaces yeah because i wouldn't want to limit just those two right or there may be others right yes they support spaces including black lives matter lgbtq symbols i didn't catch that sorry to allow black lives matter and lgbtq symbols yeah i said support spaces including black lives matter and lgbtq simple a motion to allow support safe i thought you did a great job i don't know it's recorded we can just go back and listen to it it was great i've read like six different versions so i can't we can't remember it i i don't know what cause like people i keep here i can't see any

160of you because i am trying to type so i just hear random pieces of motions just keep right in the pieces it'll all come together we're going to try again we'll disagree with it wait exactly one thing i just i just looked it up because i sort of had memory that i'd seen this but um this sort of movement where people put actual physical stickers on their school doors is uh is referred to as safe zone right for many different kinds of students and we approve the creation of platforms through the use of stickers do we need to be specific at all about the types of of groups i i was just thinking about like what if somebody came in with a really really controversial group i don't know what that would be something that

161does not so that we we do not support you know white supremacy for example and they're like well i need a support safe zone for white supremacy and we don't want that so thinking about that within the policy i don't know the grown-ups decide i mean alyssa can't be a safe zone for white supremacy she would she would not be a safe zone for them probably not i'm guessing they would take i mean i don't know no no i get that i'm just thinking when somebody else reads this right yeah when somebody else reads this we just want to be sure that it's putting out what we what we intend it to right i don't want someone saying hey you can put the nazi flag on your cork board well it's a safe zone of

162accepting acceptance well yeah right but um white supremacists are not accepting other groups right there so i i don't know if there's a way to word it where it okay i have an idea she's done i got i got i got something a motion was made to allow the creation of safe zones in our school both physically and virtually by displaying symbols of support for marginalized communities marginalized yes communities love it that's perfect and you and you could if you want to get specific to tonight's request including okay so beth you have um colleen made the motion that we all work to write and scott seconded it was there any further discussion on the motion yeah brittany made a really good point i mean that we that we don't we're not obligated to create safe

163spaces for any marginalized right so i don't know how we could change the wording i mean i like the marginalized is it correct to say historically marginalized or is that i think building a little leaf okay and also a teacher has to ask to do this right so we have a whole separate set of policies for a student this is specifically a teacher who is asking to put this on their door and i i don't think we have any teachers who are going to be asking to put um white supremacist stickers on their door at least i you know i hope i hope not so i you know i think that keeps us keeps us sort of on track too i was more thinking um and that might have been a horrible example but i

164was more thinking about community members coming in saying why is my group not supported by you it is just as valuable whether you know what i mean like i don't know i think that's the discussion sorry dr baker go ahead right now let's say i think that's exactly the kind of sarah's talking about if that comes forward or comes up or gets requested i think we we have that we have that conversation about what what is a marginalized group what is you know what is a safe space yeah i mean i think that's uh that's important yeah but i i understand because it's part of you know it goes it goes all the way back to some of the early court decisions around freedom of speech you know all the black armband stuff and brown

165versus the board of education i mean that's all there because okay you want to let this group and now you're going to let this group you know so you just got to be careful about that but i think you've done a good job wording it and you'll you'll be a leader in this su with this stuff because it's going to come up in other spots and other spaces and it's about to come up hard in our fu because we're about to venture on on a policy that will embrace some of this stuff at the su level like nikki said and i will tell you whether it's heartland or winter or west windsor there are some interesting people up in them thar hills and and we've got we've got to be we've got to be ready

166for that that's all okay um in case we need to vote on that motion oh yeah we need to vote on it so all those in favor please wait are we done discussion sounds it okay all those in favor please say aye all those opposed okay motion has passed unanimously um and i also forwarded everybody the um federal newsnetwork.com um thing that i quoted earlier um that is added support you need kind of a legal like the the ed's rule but this isn't a political organization um okay melissa thank you thank you thank you i really appreciate you guys taking the time to uh hear my little end vote on this i um really just i really do appreciate it and i will not keep you any later than i need to um i hope

167you guys have a really great night and i will see some of you tomorrow i can't wait to visit the virtual office yeah oh you should see it if they're there wait i can't wait pretty awesome invite me in we might want to go into executive session a quick update on where we are okay um so we will shift that down um and then uh we need to set the next agenda um [Music] we're gonna keep budget on there um and we'll let ed add whatever he wants to add about the cares money if he learns anything uh maybe no i'll i'm gonna leave fortune of a graduate on here jordan if it was or it could be longer yeah we might be ready at that point and i think we also probably speaking about

168ed you might want to couch under you know but i think we should start talking about budget and i don't know something in draft form probably not but we can start talking about priorities and all that stuff yeah um and then um we should at that point have an anti-racism task force update that's i can email these to you later i'm writing them down too are we gonna need a negotiations update we'll leave that on there um uh there anything that i am missing i don't think so okay um i want to formally add to the agenda um because somewhere in the last year the principles report has fallen off it happened during covet yeah i just started making them again so and the secretary fell off too so i i think as part of

169my principles report or david's report you're going to get the covet update i mean it's going to be included in that and probably um maybe some of the other things maybe not anti-racism task force but we david did ask us to uh who wanted to be a part of that and i think all the principals said you want me and angie actually yeah okay i wanna um in in our pre-code those were at the end of the meeting yeah did the minutes get done this time yay you joined yeah thank you um i would like to move the principal's report and superintendent's report in the meeting okay because i feel like that sets the tone for where we are as a district and when we used to do that at the end sometimes i felt

170like it was nine o'clock and had some surprises and i was like uh oh so yeah okay so david can you make sure that those start showing up on the agenda again yeah i think part of it too right is to maybe you already said this but it's the transition between diane and everybody so we'll get laurie to yeah you and i just need to remember to you know we will we'll get lori to put that on yeah and i forgot i noticed at the last meeting actually i noticed it like four meetings ago so this just tells you how good i am at doing that i look at the main topics when i get those emails that say is this good well yeah um i have the meeting is october 19th correct yeah when

171is the meaning that's what i've got and i think the invite has already gone out to everybody yeah i mean i think we've got a perpetual invite for the for whatever that third monday of the month is yeah i think that's great yep okay um so i think uh we'll take a motion to move into executive session um for a negotiations update um and a legal matter so david you need to turn off the actually we need the motion yeah we need to get into into executive session first okay colleen this moves it and sarah seconds all those in favor they say i okay okay i think we can move to executive session now all right hold on i'll get us out of uh i'll get us out of recording and there's i don't think

172there's anybody else in now there's anybody else in and everybody that's here can stay